This invention relates to an apparatus for bearing a head evenly. The purpose of the pillow is to make a sleeper's head be borne in a favourable height in order to ease shoulder and neck muscles, and to bear the head with more proper area to reduce heat or regional ache happening to the head during sleep, or else the epidermis of the head will often reflex heat and ache to the sleeper to turn over his body. Therefor it is evident that the sleeper, if his head is stimulated again and again, can't get sufficient rest.
Since an infant under six months old cannot turn over himself, he will, if without proper help from his mother, feel uncomfortable and might cry due to the heat generated by the contact of his head and the pillow, and his skin will easily be inflamed because of the heat and sweat. If the pillow is not soft enough, the infant's head could be transfigured. Although a transfigured head has a larger area to contact with the pillow and will therefore comfort the infant, the internal pressure of the head will increase and the abnormal un-spheric space inside of the head will also prevent the infant's brain cell from growing normally. Therefore the possibility of negative influence to the infant's wisdom cultivation exists. Once the infant is grown with a transfigured head and there is no appropriate pillow which can bear his head evenly, his head will naturally contact with the pillow by the transfigured flattened area of his head everytime he feels uncomfortable or hot while sleeping. Accordingly, the transfiguration of the head is increasingly hard to be corrected.
There is obviously a need to improve the defect of a hard pillow; providing a proper height of the pillow is also needed to help the sleeper to obtain good rest.
The conventional soft pillow, with its inner stuff which can obstruct the air from normally circulating, can neither dissipate the heat on the pillow properly, nor bear the head evenly, and it will even obstruct the infant's breathing if the sleeping posture of the infant is not proper. The design of a pillow or similar means, which can bear a head more evenly and help to make the infant's head to grow in a spheric shape and can be adjusted in height to fit everyone, is really of great necessity.
The British Patent No. 525,996 obtained by Fowler et al. provided a pillow with spaced apart uprights which are attached together by cross beams. A clothes support is stretched over the beams and is attached at both ends to the uprights between spaced beams. The above mentioned pillow can bear a head more evenly in only the cross direction; similarly, British Patent No. 385,129 of Bury, British Patent No. 25,953 of Yaung, British Patent No. 830,837 of Hurst, and British Patnet No. 186,481 of Galley disclosed the pillows that can bear a head evenly in only the cross direction of the pillow instead of in a whole spheric area.
The U.S. Pat. No. 3,403,413 of Calhoun et al provided a pillow-like apparatus by using a plurality of mattress-like segments which each includes a base and a pair of laterally-spaced sides depending upward from the base. However, the disclosed apparatus cannot adjust the height of the support. Please keep in mind that though the mattress-like segment seems to have formed a spheric area to bear a head, the fact is that it bears a head with only about 10 supporting points, which number is just a little more than an ordinary one, and that is not suitable for infants to use with.
According to British Patent Nos. 830,837 and 525,996 an adjustable support is disclosed. Though the support is adjustable with a predetermined distance, it cannot be adjusted in smaller space. Further details are discussed hereinbelow.